From Skaldin let us turn to Engelhardt. His letters "From the Village" are also journalistic sketches of the countryside, so that both the content and even the form of his book are very similar to Skaldin's book. Engelhardt is far more talented than Skaldin; his letters from the village are written incomparably more vividly, more colorfully. He lacks the long reasonings of the solid author of "In Backwater and in the Capital," but in compensation he has far more apt characterizations and other vivid images. It is not surprising that Engelhardt's book enjoys such firm sympathy among the reading public and was recently reissued, whereas Skaldin's book is almost entirely forgotten, although Engelhardt's letters began to appear in *Otechestvennye Zapiski* only two years after Skaldin's book came out. Therefore, we have no need to acquaint the reader with the content of Engelhardt's book, and we shall limit ourselves to only a brief characterization of two aspects of his views: first, those views proper to "the heritage" in general and in particular common to both Engelhardt and Skaldin; second, specifically populist views. Engelhardt is already a populist, but in his outlook there are so many traits still common to all enlighteners, so much that has been rejected or altered by contemporary populism, that one is puzzled where to place him: among representatives of "the heritage" in general without populist coloring, or among populists. What brings Engelhardt closest to the former is first of all the remarkable sobriety of his views, the simple and direct characterization of reality, the merciless exposé of all negative qualities – of the "foundations" in general and of the peasantry in particular – those very "foundations" whose false idealization and touching up constitute a necessary component part of populism. Engelhardt's populism, being expressed extremely weakly and timidly, stands therefore in direct and glaring contradiction with the picture of village reality that he has drawn with such talent, and if some economist or publicist were to take as the basis of his judgments about the village the data and observations adduced by Engelhardt,[278] then populist conclusions from such material would be impossible. The idealization of the peasant and his commune – one of the necessary constituent parts of populism – and populists of all shades, from Mr. V. V. to Mr. Mikhailovsky, have paid abundant tribute to this striving for idealization and touching up of the "commune." In Engelhardt there is not a trace of such touching up. In contrast to the hackneyed phrases about the communal character of our peasant, the hackneyed oppositions of this "communality" to the individualism of cities, competition in capitalist economy, etc., Engelhardt exposes the astonishing individualism of the small farmer with complete ruthlessness. He shows in detail that our "peasants are the most extreme proprietors in matters of property" (p. 62, cited from the 1835 edn.), that they cannot stand "collective work," hating it from motives that are narrowly personal and egotistical: in collective work, each "fears overworking" (p. 206). This fear of overworking reaches the highest degree of absurdity (indeed, even tragicomedy), when the author recounts how women living in one house and bound together by common economy and kinship each wash separately their own portion of the table at which they dine, or alternately milk the cows, collecting the milk for their own child (fearing milk embezzlement) and each preparing separately for their own child a porridge (p. 323). Engelhardt elucidates these traits in such detail, confirms them with such a mass of examples, that there can be no question of the fortuitousness of these facts. One of two things: either Engelhardt is a worthless observer who does not deserve trust, or the tales about the communality and communal qualities of our muzhik are empty fabrication, transferring to economy traits abstracted from the form of land tenure (and from this form of land tenure there have been abstracted all its fiscal-administrative aspects as well). Engelhardt shows that the tendency of the muzhik in his economic activity is kulakism: "every peasant possesses a certain degree of kulakism" (p. 491), "kulak ideals reign in the peasant milieu"… "I have more than once pointed out that peasants are extremely developed in individualism, egotism, striving for exploitation"… "Each is proud of being a pike and strives to devour a crucian carp." The tendency of the peasantry is not at all toward a "communal" order, not at all toward "popular production," but toward the most ordinary petty-bourgeois order proper to all capitalist societies – has been proved by Engelhardt splendidly. The strivings of the well-to-do peasant to engage in trading operations (363), to distribute grain for work, to buy the labor of the poor muzhik (p. 457, 492 and others), that is to say, in economic language, the transformation of peasant proprietors into rural bourgeoisie, Engelhardt has described and proved conclusively. "If peasants do not transition to artel economy," says Engelhardt, "and each household will conduct its affairs separately, then even with abundance of land among peasant farmers there will be both the landless and agricultural laborers. I will say more: I believe that the difference in the conditions of peasants will be even greater than now. Despite communal land tenure, alongside the 'rich' there will be many factually landless agricultural laborers. What good does it do me or my children that I have a right to land, when I have neither capital nor tools for working it? That is the same as giving land to a blind man – eat it!" (p. 370). "Artel economy" stands here alone with a certain sad irony, as a kind, innocent wish, not only not flowing from the data about the peasantry, but even directly refuted and excluded by these data.

Another trait bringing Engelhardt close to representatives of the heritage without any populist coloring is his belief that the chief and root cause of the calamitous situation of the peasantry lies in the remnants of serfdom and in the regulation inherent to it. Eliminate these remnants and this regulation – and things will right themselves. Engelhardt's absolutely negative attitude toward regulation, his caustic mockery of all attempts through regulation from above to benefit the muzhik – stand in the sharpest opposition to populist hopes in "the reason and conscience, knowledge and patriotism of the ruling classes" (words of Mr. Yuzhakov in *Russkoe Bogatstvo*, 1896, no. 12, p. 106), to populist scheming about the "organization of production" and suchlike. Let us recall how sarcastically Engelhardt assailed the regulation that one could not sell vodka at a mill, a regulation intended for the muzhik's "benefit"; with what indignation he speaks of the mandatory decree of several zemstvos in 1880 not to sow rye before August 15, of this – also dictated by considerations about the muzhik's benefit – crude interference of cabinet "scholars" in the economy of "millions of peasant proprietors" (424). Pointing to such regulations and ordinances as the prohibition of smoking in coniferous forest, shooting pike in spring, cutting birch trees for "May," ravaging nests, etc., Engelhardt sarcastically remarks: "…concern for the muzhik has always been and is the chief sorrow of intelligent people. Who lives for himself? Everyone lives for the muzhik!.. The muzhik is stupid, cannot arrange things on his own. If no one takes care of him, he will burn all the forests, kill all the birds, catch all the fish, ruin the land and himself perish entirely" (398). Tell me, reader, could this writer sympathize even with the laws on the inalienability of allotments beloved by populists? Could he have said anything similar to the phrase I cited above from one of the pillars of *Russkoe Bogatstvo*? Could he share the viewpoint of another pillar of the same journal, Mr. N. Karyshev, reproaching our provincial zemstvos (in the '90s!) for not finding place "for systematic large-scale, serious expenditures on the organization of agricultural labor"?[279]

Let us point out one more trait bringing Engelhardt close to Skaldin: this is Engelhardt's unconscious attitude toward many purely bourgeois wishes and measures. Not that Engelhardt sought to touch up small bourgeois, to invent some excuses (à la Mr. V. V.) against applying this designation to one or another entrepreneur – not at all. Engelhardt simply, being a practical proprietor, gets carried away by all kinds of progress, improvements in economy, completely not noticing that the social form of these improvements provides the best refutation of his own theories about the impossibility of capitalism among us. Let us recall, for instance, how he gets carried away by the successes achieved in his economy thanks to the system of payment to workers by the piece (for flax beating, for threshing, etc.). Engelhardt does not seem to suspect that the replacement of hourly payment by piece-work is one of the most widespread devices of developing capitalist economy, which achieves through this device an intensification of the intensity of labor and an increase in the rate of surplus-value. Another example. Engelhardt ridicules the program of the *Zemledelcheskaya Gazeta* {132}: "cessation of leasing fields in rounds, establishment of day-labor economy, introduction of improved machines, tools, breeds of cattle, multi-field system, improvement of meadows and pastures and so on and so forth." – "But this is all only general phrases!" – exclaims Engelhardt (128). And yet, it is precisely this program that Engelhardt carried out in his own economic practice, achieving technical progress in his economy precisely on the basis of the day-labor organization of it. Or further: we have seen how frankly and how truthfully Engelhardt exposed the actual tendencies of the peasant proprietor's economy; but this did not in the slightest prevent him from asserting that "what is needed is not factories and not plants, but little (Engelhardt's emphasis) village distilleries, oil presses," etc. (p. 336), that is, "what is needed" is the transition of rural bourgeoisie to technical agricultural productions – a transition which everywhere and always has served as one of the most important symptoms of agricultural capitalism. Here revealed itself the fact that Engelhardt was not a theoretician, but a practical proprietor. It is one thing to reason about the possibility of progress without capitalism, another thing to conduct an economy oneself. Having set himself the goal of rationally organizing his economy, Engelhardt was forced by the force of surrounding circumstances to achieve this through purely capitalist methods and to set aside all his theoretical and abstract doubts about "day-labor." Skaldin reasoned in theory like a typical Manchester economist, completely not noticing either the character of his reasoning or its correspondence with the needs of Russia's capitalist evolution. Engelhardt on practice was forced to act like a typical Manchester economist, contrary to his theoretical protest against capitalism and his desire to believe in the special paths of his fatherland.

And Engelhardt did have this faith, which is what makes us call him a populist. Engelhardt already clearly sees the actual tendency of Russia's economic development and begins to make excuses for the contradictions of this development. He strives to prove the impossibility in Russia of agricultural capitalism, to prove that "we have no knecht" (p. 556) – although he himself had in the most detailed manner refuted the tales about the dearness of our workers, he himself had shown for what a pittance his cowherd Pyotr works with his family, who receives besides maintenance 6 rubles a year "for the purchase of salt, vegetable oil, clothing" (p. 10). "And even so he is envied, and if I refused him – immediately 50 volunteers would be found to take his place" (p. 11). Pointing to the success of his economy, to the skillful handling of the plow by workers, Engelhardt triumphantly exclaims: "and who are the plowmen? Ignorant, unscrupulous Russian peasants" (p. 225).

Having refuted through his own economic management and his exposé of peasant individualism any illusions about "communality," Engelhardt, however, not only "believed" in the possibility of peasants transitioning to artel economy, but also expressed his "conviction" that this is how it will be, that we Russians will precisely accomplish this great deed, introduce new ways of conducting economy. "That is precisely our distinctive character, the originality of our economy" (p. 349). Engelhardt the realist transforms into Engelhardt the romantic, compensating for the complete absence of "distinctive character" in the methods of his economy and in the methods of peasant economy that he observed – through "faith" in the coming "distinctive character"! From this faith it is but a step to the ultra-populist traits which – though very rarely – appear in Engelhardt, to narrow nationalism bordering on chauvinism ("And we will split Europe asunder," "and in Europe the muzhik will stand up for us" (p. 387) – Engelhardt argued to a landowner apropos of war), and even to idealization of obrok![Yes, that very Engelhardt who devoted so many excellent pages of his book to describing the downtrodden and humiliated condition of the peasant who borrowed money or grain for work and was forced to work for almost nothing under the worst conditions of personal dependence[281] – this very Engelhardt went so far as to say that "it would be good if the doctor (the discussion was about the benefit and necessity of a physician in the village. V. I.) had his own economy, so that the muzhik could work off payment for treatment" (p. 41). Commentary is superfluous.

– On the whole, comparing the positive traits of Engelhardt's worldview characterized above (that is, those common to him with representatives of "the heritage" without any populist coloring) and the negative ones (that is, populist), we must recognize that the former absolutely predominate in the author of "From the Village," whereas the latter appear as it were like an alien, accidental insertion, inspired from without and not cohering with the basic tone of the book.